History Main / ArtisticLicenseNuclearPhysics

* The ''Series/{{Forever}}'' episode "The King of Columbus Circle" features a Litvinenko-inspired murder that makes the below-mentioned ''Series/PersonOfInterest'' episode seem like a dramatized IAEA report. After realizing that the corpse of the week shows signs of radiation exposure despite turning down radiation therapy for his cancer, Henry rushes to the body as it's being wheeled out with a radiation detector and concludes:

* ''VideoGame/{{STALKER}}'' takes place in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (after ''more'' goes wrong and it gets even worse than it is in real life). Radiation is a common hazard, but it acts nothing like actual radiation. Being dosed with radiation acts like a "poison" status effect, draining health until you rid yourself of the radiation. Which you can do either with "anti-rad" medicine or by ''drinking vodka''.

* The BigBad of the second storyline of ''Series/TheFlash'' Season 8 is a mass of black fire that burns with intense cold (except when it doesn't). According to Caitlin and Frost's mom, who's supposed to be an expert on the subject, this "is almost an exact description of how cold fusion works." No part of this bears any relationship to how cold fusion works.

** Amazingly enough, ''Anime/MobileSuitGundam'' averted this: a nuke is launched in one episode, and is then sliced apart by the eponymous Gundam's beam saber. Slicing the nuke ''does not'' cause it to explode, but fall to pieces harmlessly, though he does have to cut it a certain way to avoid detonation.
** Sadly, later series are more inaccurate. ''[[Anime/MobileSuitGundam0083StardustMemory Stardust Memory]]'' prominently featured a nuclear weapon as a central part of the plot... which did not behave much like an actual nuke would, with the biggest mistake being the GP-02 Physalis Gundam's atomic bazooka firing some sort of energy beam rather than a projectile. It has been suggested that the bazooka is actually a [[http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/spacegunconvent.php#Nukes_In_Space~Nuclear_Shaped_Charges casaba howitzer]], a directed energy weapon that utilizes a nuclear-shaped charge to generate a high-energy gamma ray laser and is essentially a hypothetical real-life WaveMotionGun. However, they still fail in that in order to make a casaba howitzer that small without blowing up the GP-02 in the process, it would have to be made of a material much MUCH stronger than anything currently known to man, and since mobile suits of all makes and models are getting torn apart by simple energy and kinetic weapons, this probably isn't the case.

** ''Anime/MobileSuitGundamThe08thMSTeam'' averts this interestingly. Nuclear weapons are banned by a treaty, however all mobile suits have nuclear reactors. A General in the Federation [[WeHaveReserves keeps sending in mobile suits]] to a mountain stronghold in the hope that it will get damaged just right to trigger a meltdown and take out the base. The mobile suits in question use Minovsky ultracompact fusion reactors, which should not be melting down but if hit with a beam weapon can explode with great force. The Federation General in question apparently overlooked the relative rarity of beam weapons on Zeon mobile suits.

* ''[[Franchise/JusticeLeagueOfAmerica Justice League]]'' #3 (1987) features the "cooling tower = reactor building" misconception.
* As does ''[[Franchise/SpiderMan The Amazing Spider-Man]]'' #329: Spider-Man (who has the powers of Captain Universe at this point) fights the Tri-Sentinel, who attacks a nuclear power plant. During their fight, the Tri-Sentinel smacks the cooling tower, to which Spidey comments: "Oh, no! He's cracked a ''containment tower''!"
** So, what is Spiderman expecting to happen anyway? More spiders receiving radiation and in turn more people turning into a whole army of Spidermen and -women?
* Another ''Spider-Man'' story, the already ridiculous "Aunt May almost marries Doctor Octopus" story, climaxed with Hammerhead confronting Doctor Octopus in front of a breeder reactor. "The slightest vibration could set off a chain reaction!", Octopus exclaims. Hammerhead doesn't listen, and charges at Ock headfirst - next page depicts a mushroom cloud, of course. A later issue (which revealed that both villains had survived this) showed that the "chain reaction" was caused by Hammerhead getting his cranium stuck in a control panel. Never mind that the biggest danger with a breeder reactor is fire, not everything going kaboom.

-->"No one there is a physicist. But they still know what happens when you puncture a nuclear reactor."

--->"Well, I ''am'' a physicist, and the answer to what happens when you puncture a nuclear reactor is: Pretty much nothing. [...] In no case would you get, as ''Identity Crisis''[='s=] narrator seems to think is self-evident, a nuclear explosion. Worst case, you get an explosion of radioactive material (not unlike a 'dirty bomb,') but you're not going to get a Fat Man-type explosion."
* ''ComicBook/IncredibleHulk'': Gamma rays and gamma radiation are depicted as visible green energy, when visible green light is at a lower frequency than gamma rays, and gamma rays are at a higher frequency than visible light, ultraviolet, and X-rays. [[spoiler: Of course, the form of gamma radiation that created the Hulk is [[ComicBook/ImmortalHulk later revealed]] to be part of an EldritchAbomination that doesn't follow scientific laws.]]
* In Creator/BrianKVaughan's ''Logan'', during World War II, Logan happens to be hanging out in Hiroshima at the exact same time the atomic bomb detonates. Standing within the bomb's blast radius, within view of the Genbaku Dome, the only structure left standing after the blast, now the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial Hiroshima Peace Memorial]], Logan survives, because his healing factor means he's really tough. He shows injuries that look like severe radiation burns, but these are temporary because he has a healing factor. He doesn't show signs of radiation poisoning staying in his body well into modern day, probably because of his healing factor. And he is not disintegrated by "a force equivalent to 12,500 tons of TNT" because... healing factor?
* Deconstructed in ''ComicBook/{{Watchmen}}''. The BigBad uses this trope to convince an ignorant public that Dr. Manhattan is a walking radioactive cancer-machine.

* ''The ComicBook/MetalMen'' commits a similar mistake to that described for the Green Hornet, below. Magnus's bomb group is about to let go and obliterate his evil robot twin, but when he sees the Metal Man "Plutonium" he orders them to hold fire for fear of setting it off. Evil!Magnus knows this and lampshades it to Platinum seconds before Real!Magnus perceives the situation. Of course in this case it might ''not'' be an error because Plutonium was a sentient creature which could choose its moment to explode.
* A minor one: in Marvel Comics' ''ComicBook/TheInfinityGauntlet'', ComicBook/{{Thanos}} at one point mentions having a "thermal nuclear device," rather than a ''thermo''-nuclear device.
* ''ComicBook/TheAvengers'' villain Radioactive Man frequently uses his powers with no indication that he or his surroundings will become contaminated with radiation, or that the heroes, villains, or any bystanders will receive radiation poisoning from his presence or the use of his powers. But we do know his radiation can deflect Thor's hammer being thrown towards him.
* ''Tales of Suspense'' #49: At a nuclear bomb test at Stark's nuclear weapons plant, "A highly-refined nuclear explosion takes place, dangerously close to Iron Man and The Angel!!" Luckily, Iron Man is protected by his "heavily-insulated flexible metal costume", which allows him to "withstand the tremendous shock of the explosion without suffering any lasting ill effects." But Angel, "wearing no such protective clothing, receives the brunt of the radioactivity"; suddenly, the radiation turns the Angel's personality to evil!

* Dan Jurgen's ''[[ComicBook/TheMightyThor Thor]]'': ''Thor'' #51 has Thor magically contain the explosive blast from a nuclear missile strike, with no hint of any radiation escaping into the atmosphere. In Asgard, a nuclear bomb detonates in ''Thor'' #66-67: Thor survives without carrying around radiation, and Asgard does not stay a nuclear wasteland.
* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: Atomia's introduction has a few examples, for instance Diana wearing a containment suit to gather Atomia's shrunk down highly radioactive lab but then she takes it off and she and the Holldiay Girls interact with it and are even imprisoned in it without any ill effects.

* Peter Chimera's ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' fanfic ''[[Fanfic/QuarterLifeHalfwayToDestruction Quarter-Life: Halfway to Destruction]]''. Being a TrollFic, it does not have the usual errors but instead makes up new ones. Examples:

* ''Fanfic/LifeAfterDeathTrilogy'', a post-''Film/SpiderMan2'' fanfic starring Doc Ock, deals with two examples of nuclear physics. First is Dr. Octavius's infamous experimental fusion reactor, and more in line with this trope are the four plutonium batteries he uses to power the tentacles. At one point Octavius mentions that he's rigged a failsafe in them that will deliberately overload the batteries in the event of his death as a way to keep the tentacles from falling into anyone else's hands, essentially making a quartet of small nuclear bombs. Vindictive as he might be, this trope does get averted in that Octavius knows full well that nuclear reactor =/= nuclear bomb and the damage his little batteries would inflict is nowhere near the annihilation of half of Washington DC he threatens.
* ''Fanfic/TheLegendOfTotalDramaIsland'' uses a bit of artistic license to provide a plausible(ish) explanation for the detonation of Izzy's firestarter. [[note]]The canon counterpart of this scene was merely a sight gag that viewers [[RuleOfFunny weren't expected to dwell on]], but the fanfic author is fond of [[ShownTheirWork explaining things]].[[/note]] According to [[AllThereInTheManual the story's notes]], the story accepts as true the exaggerated claim, from a 1961 ''Popular Science'' article, that a californium bomb with a 10-ton yield could be the size of a pistol bullet.

* In ''[[Film/TheMatrix Animatrix]]'', the scenes that explain how the machine city went to war with humanity has a part that involves humans nuking the shit out of their city. And the narrator says that it doesn't work because the machines "aren't affected by radiation." Ouch. Apparently nukes in TheFuture have no blastwave, and robots of TheFuture are immune to heat and the ElectroMagneticPulse that comes from a nuclear blast. Considering they use EMP as their main weapon against the machines in the movies, it makes even less sense.
** '...the machines had little to fear of the bombs' radiation and heat.' The former statement is problematic, the later is very much true. Most of a A-bomb's destruction comes from heat and machines are darned better at surviving that then mere flesh. The radiation? Not really an issue, as thanks to the square law of dissipation it'd only matter if you're close enough to be killed by the blast-wave. "Funfact": armored fighting vehicles still proved surprisingly resilient against both heat and the blast-wave, hence why research focused on increasing the emitted radiation, resulting in the Neutron Bombs.

* In ''Film/{{Aliens}}'' the colony's nuclear fusion reactor has been damaged. This means that it's going to go off like Tsar Bomba in a matter of hours.
** However, it's mostly averted in [[Film/{{Alien}} the first movie]]-- when the ''Nostromo''[='=]s engines overload, the blast appears as a large circle of light in space. Of course it’s then immediately playing another trope straight by having a shockwave hit the shuttle. A shockwave. In a vacuum. Complete with sound.
* In the cyberpunk action film ''Film/BabylonAD'' a radiation-shielded train passes over a bridge built across a [[FailsafeFailure massive crater blasted by a nuclear power plant]]. While a cool scene, apart from the "reactors blow up" fallacy, it also raises the question of the difficulties of building a bridge in such a highly-radioactive area (plus the expense of creating shielded trains) versus just building a detour.
* ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' featured a minuscule plutonium powered fission reactor that barely altered the shape of the famous [=DeLorean=] time machine, had a 1.21 Gigawatt output (greater than many full-sized nuclear power stations), and expended a fuel rod in an instant. The epilogue and sequels show Doc retrofitted a futuristic appliance - the "Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor" - that looks like a coffee grinder and runs on household waste.
* Averted and played straight in Creator/JohnWoo's ''[[Film/BrokenArrow1996 Broken Arrow]]''.

** Averted: '''Broken Arrow''' is the correct United States military nuclear incident terminology for a nuclear weapon being lost in transit. Curiously the actual incident is an '''Empty Quiver''', that is to say theft of nuclear weapons, but the deception by the BigBad [[spoiler:Deakins]] makes it look like an accident. Or does it?! Because...

** Played straight: And even assuming that acute radiation sickness is an instant killer, then the team - specialized in the recovery of nuclear weapons - would not have run in head first into a hot-spot without detection equipment and protective clothing. No-one would be fooled by the deception because such - supposed - behaviour would be incompetence of the highest order.

** Averted: [[spoiler:Hale]] says they will disable the weapons by entering the wrong access codes enough times into the PAL - Permissive Action Links - of the weapon. In real life this would work. But alas...

** And finally, averted, as the train carrying the nuke crashes [[spoiler: with the momentum of the crash [[RasputinianDeath launching the warhead straight into Deakins' chest, through a few walls, and right into an exploding helicopter]]]] without it detonating.
* Subverted in ''Film/ChairmanOfTheBoard''. A man paints himself with glow in the dark paint and says that he's glowing because of excessive radiation from Edison's invention. Edison points out that if the man was telling the truth about the radiation, he wouldn't be glowing; he'd be dead.
* Averted '''and''' played straight in ''Film/TheChinaSyndrome''.

* In ''Film/TheDarkKnightRises'', the ChekhovsGun is the core of a fusion reactor designed to provide clean energy. It can be (and is) modified by a Russian scientist into a nuclear bomb with some work [[spoiler:and direct access to the blueprints, thanks to the fact that the woman who bankrolled and helped design the reactor was working with Bane]]. The reactor's core will also degrade over a period of time and eventually detonate [[spoiler: which Bane has calculated to the second, again, thanks to the schematics he would have access to]]. While these are not possible with real-life nuclear reactors or theoretical cold fusion reactors, the reactor in the movie is all but outright stated to be a unique design created by Bruce Wayne and his scientists.

** The radiation detection capability of the MUTO is quite extraordinary, and radiation is not nutritive, except maybe to certain fungi...this is a Godzilla film after all.

* The HBO movie ''Hostile Waters'' (based on on a real life incident involving the Soviet sub K-219) features a Soviet submarine which is leaking seawater into one of the missile tubes. The chief engineer informs the Captain that enough seawater mixed with the rocket fuel will cause an explosion and that the warheads will detonate. While an explosion (which did occur in real life) would be catastrophic, there is no chance that the warheads will go nuclear. In real life, submarine was was brought to a nuclear safe condition (as a result of the nuclear reactor not shutting down properly) at the cost of a sailor's life, but the explosion itself caused the submarine and its nuclear complement to sink to a depth of about 18,000 feet.

** ''Film/TheWorldIsNotEnough'': The BigBad [[spoiler: who is actually TheDragon, or at least TheHeavy]], gets hold of the plutonium sphere from a bomb, forms it into a rod, and tries to insert it into the reactor of a submarine and cause a meltdown. \\
\\
Bond and the BigBad[[spoiler:/TheHeavy]] handle the plutonium bar with their bare hands. A rod of Pu that size would weigh at least 50 pounds, which is big enough to be a critical mass. It would be exceptionally hot to the touch, and also would be emitting lots of neutron radiation. To be fair, the villain is both immune to pain and suicidal, so the fact that the rods should be scalding hot and emiiting lethal levels of radiation might actually be excusable. Bond has no such excuse, though.

** ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies'' plays the trope straight at the beginning, when the top brass is talking about some Soviet nuclear torpedoes detonating or spreading plutonium from their missile strike. Averted, however, with regards to the climax’s missile launch, which is a non-nuclear cruise missile.
* In ''Film/K19TheWidowmaker'', after the K-19's reactor suffer a coolant leak, the reactor officer, which just graduated from the academy, explains that the pressure will continue to build up until it reaches critical, at which point he explains he has no idea what's gonna happen but speculates that a nuclear explosion would happen with the melt down and "cook off" the nuclear warheads they're carrying.

** The power source for a Robot has absolutely no relationship to whether it's analog or digital. Raleigh connects the two for no reason.

* In an aversion of the trope, in ''Film/ThePeacemaker'' Nicole Kidman successfully stops an atomic explosion by distorting a piece of the explosive jacket surrounding the plutonium core, resulting in a small (if a bit dirty) conventional explosion because it wasn't shaped properly. This is exactly right.

* The ''Film/SpiderMan2'' features a ''extremely'' silly depiction of fusion power so Doc Ock's tentacles take control of his body (they're to manipulate the fusions!). Highlights include Doc Ock saying there's only 25 pounds of tritium in the world, a deeply ridiculous open-sided reactor, and dropping an object established to be a miniature sun[[note]]You can tell it's a miniature sun because it has a miniature photosphere with miniature sunspots, and the occasional miniature prominence or flare[[/note]] into a river where it, um, goes out harmlessly. Because fusion plasma does that.

*** Quenching in the river is also ridiculous - as anyone who has passed a nuclear cooling tower knows that quenching that kind of fire should have caused a tremendous amount of dangerously hot steam. The energy can't just "go away".

* In ''Film/SupermanIVTheQuestForPeace'', Superman drops Nuclear Man into the cooling tower of a nuclear power plant... and he somehow ends up inside the reactor (which should be located in a different building). Which somehow ends up destroying Nuclear Man.

** Also you can't use C14 dating on non organic substances (sometimes works on pottery because straw was used to reinforce unfired pots). C14 is built up in living organisms then decays after the organism dies, so assuming the statue was organic its age would be dated from its creation regardless of time travel. Uranium dating would have avoided all these problems.[[note]]Though the error bars on uranium dating are a lot bigger than ~3000 years, so a reasonable scientist would likely just conclude that a date in the future just meant the item was made "recently" ... within the last couple of million years. This is not especially useful, unless they suspect it wasn't made by humans.[[/note]]

* Another surprising aversion in the comedy/action flick ''Film/TrueLies'':

* Also surprisingly averted in ''Film/TheFateOfTheFurious'', which otherwise [[ArtisticLicensePhysics breaks every physics law in existence]]. [[spoiler:The submarine porting nuclear missiles doesn't explode in a nuclear blast when it's destroyed by heatseeker, and Tej even points out that the missiles aren't dangerous without being armed]].
* [[DiscussedTrope Discussed]] and [[AvertedTrope averted]] in ''Film/UnderSiege'' when Steven Seagal's character is preparing to fire on the sub with the stolen warheads. Jordan Tate asks, "Won't the bombs detonate?"; he tells her: "It doesn't work that way; they will just sink".

* Parodied in ''Film/YoungEinstein'', when Einstein attempts to add bubbles to beer by splitting the ''beer atom''... with a chisel. Eventually he [[GoneHorriblyRight succeeds]], and an exterior shot lets us watch his shack explode.
** He goes on to ''top'' this by ''stopping a runaway nuclear reaction'' by ''hooking up an electric guitar to the reactor'' and playing it at insanely high decibels to bleed off the energy. "''IT'S ALL RIGHT MARY! ... THEY'RE ONLY ELECTRONS!''"

* The movie ''Film/{{Testament}}'' featured a "harmless flash." If you are close enough to see the flash in such a way, you're likely being burned up in it. Nuclear flashes are ''not'' just harmless pretty or scary light - they are intense heat. That said, the scarier thing about ''{{Film/Testament}}'' is the implication that it ''wasn't'' close at all (e.g. no damage, no immediate fires)... and still was that bright.

* In ''Film/GIJoeRetaliation'' all the nukes in the world are fired but all were aborted (exploded) short of their intended targets ignores the fact that they just essentially detonated thousands of [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_bomb dirty bombs]] in the upper atmophere all over the earth. All that undetonated fissile material (It ''doesn't'' get destroyed or become unradioactive in a non-nuclear explosion), will be spread out and drift down to earth, polluting the planet.
** Then again this is part of [[spoiler: Cobra's evil plan]] so its probably understandable in that the people behind it don't really care as it is a WinWinEnding.
* Averted [[NightmareFuel very horrifically]] during Sarah's nightmare in ''Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay''. James Cameron actually received fan mail from actual scientists thanking and praising him for his depiction of a nuclear explosion. The ''only thing'' it got wrong was the image of Sarah's skeleton staying behind after the blast wave hits her. Everything else, from Los Angeles crumbling to people bursting into flames and blasting apart into carbonized dust? Pretty damn accurate.

* Averted in the first of Creator/HarryTurtledove's ''Literature/WorldWar'' novels, when the Germans use the the [[{{BFG}} 80-cm Dora railway artillery]] to destroy two alien ships, one of which holds the Race's nukes. The nukes' detonators go off, but no nuclear explosions occur, as the bombs are deformed by the ship exploding. However, the explosion does spread radioactive material over a large area.

* Creator/RoaldDahl's 1948 novel ''Literature/SometimeNeverAFableForSupermen'' is the first science-fiction to involve several nuclear bombs. But it averts this, being surprisingly accurate and graphic. It has two third-shot accounts by witnesses of nuclear blasts. [[spoiler:By the way, every named protagonist is killed by the same nuke.]]
* Literature/JackRyan:

** Averted in Heinlein's short story "The Long Watch". The protagonist prevents a nuclear attack on the Earth by military forces on the Moon by taking the bombs (which are Little Boy style "gun barrel" devices, rather than the Fat Man type of "implosion device" more often featured in fiction) apart and smashing their plutonium cores with a hammer. [[spoiler:In the process, he exposes himself to enough radiation to reduce his lifespan to a matter of hours....]], which is again realistic (although the absence of [[spoiler:radiation sickness]] is not).
*** The narration is too vague to definitely point the type of the bombs described, but plutonium simply ''doesn't work'' in gun-type devices due to the pre-ignition issues: it is practically impossible to separate the weapons-grade Pu-239 isotope from the heavier and more reactive 240 and 241 isotopes, which would make a gun-type device to ''fizzle''. Thus plutonium is only used in implosion-type warheads (which are more practical anyway, if more complex).

** Averted in ''Literature/TheMoonIsAHarshMistress.'' The Loonies' defense against nuclear missiles are mining lasers rigged to work as (relatively) long-range point defense weapons. Gunners are trained to burn out the missile's electronics, at which point the hydrogen-tipped missile becomes nothing more than a hunk of falling metal. Also in the novel, the protagonists fight back at Earth by [[ColonyDrop throwing rocks]] at them; an early example of mass drivers. The explosions caused by the rocks smashing into the Earth caused some to declare that the Loonies are dropping nuclear bombs. Even a few members of the Lunar government are confused, stating that it certainly looked like a nuclear bomb went off. Mannie, the protagonist, explains that they did the cosmic equivalent of striking flint to create sparks. And, as stated in the description for this trope, any sufficiently large explosion is going to result in a mushroom cloud.
* Number 4 is subverted in Ian Fleming's ''Literature/JamesBond'' novel ''Literature/{{Moonraker}}''; the nuclear explosion is [[spoiler:passed off as a conventional one to cover up Drax's plot. The radiation had blown north]].
* [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in Creator/AlanDeanFoster's [[Creator/AlanDeanFoster Spellsinger]] novel ''Paths of the Perambulator'', where Jon-Tom creates a miniature mushroom cloud using magic and then muses that nothing is impossible in a magical world.
* Spoofed in Creator/DavidLangford and John Grant's parody disaster novel ''Earthdoom''. Two men lost on the London Underground are, for different reasons, both carrying quantities of radioactive material. When one of them is discovered and forced to stand at the end of his Tube train by a conductor, he - being a newspaper science correspondent - delivers an angry lecture about how this stuff can't just explode at the drop of hat, and if this train were to run into a brick wall ''right now'', nothing would happen unless there was a sufficient amount of material on the other side in ''just the right position''... At that point, the train runs into a brick wall. Guess who's standing on the other side.

* Averted and [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] in Creator/MurrayLeinster's novella ''Second Landing''. The protagonist needs to disarm a nuclear bomb extremely quickly and does so by shooting it with a bazooka. The bazooka blast renders the bomb unworkable but does not detonate it since that requires proper sequential detonation of the shaped charges surrounding the nuclear material.
* Averted in the ''Franchise/{{Halo}}'' ExpandedUniverse, with ''Literature/HaloGhostsOfOnyx'' alone having numerous examples:

* Averted in ''Literature/TheAtrocityArchive''. A nuclear bomb is set and primed to blow an alternate reality to hell, but a member of the team realizes that's the last thing they want, as the bomb's energy will give the monster inhabiting the universe enough power to come through to ours. So, he manages to defuse the bomb by popping the caps without triggering the plutonium.
* In ''A Swiftly Tilting Planet'', one of the sequels to ''Literature/AWrinkleInTime'', the following exchange takes place when talking about ''nuclear war''.

* In John Ringo's ''Legacy of the Aldenata'' series, specifically in novel Hell's Faire, there is a new nuclear-like weapon. It is described as having its primary radioactive isotope scattered in the area of effect, carbon-13, as having a very fast half-life. The trouble is, carbon-13 has no half-life at all because it is a stable isotope. (Carbon-14, on the other hand, ''is'' radioactive, if only very slightly; its half-life is on the order of five thousand years. Such a long half-life implies a very low decay rate, and consequently complete unsuitability for use in any kind of 'dirty bomb' application.)
* In Joe Haldeman's ''Literature/TheForeverWar'', frequent reference is made to nuclear weapons with yields in the microton range. One microton is just one gram, or approximately three one-hundredths of an ounce -- or, in other words, since we're talking about yields in terms of TNT-equivalent, barely a firecracker's worth of bang, and that's if we're being generous. In theory, it would be possible to produce a nuclear explosion out of such a tiny mass of fissile material, by increasing its density enough to drive it supercritical -- trouble is, there's no point; ''The Forever War'' is set in the future, and today we know how to make [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raufoss_Mk_211 chemical-explosive rounds]] which produce quite a bit more than a firecracker's worth of bang.

** Joked about in the by a mention of neutron hand grenades, which should only be used by people with VERY strong throwing arms. They never actually appear on the page, probably because nobody's figured out how to set one off without being caught in the blast radius.[[note]]Of course, they could still be useful to a suicide bomber.[[/note]]
* ''Tribulation Force'', one of the ''Literature/LeftBehind'' books, heralds the arrival of [[TheFourHorsemenOfTheApocalypse the Second Horseman of the Apocalypse]] with two ''100 megaton'' bombs being dropped on London and New York- correction, on ''Heathrow'' and ''JFK'', as if such precise targeting would make the slightest difference to anyone with a bomb that would instantly annihilate everything within 100 km. 100 Mt is twice the yield of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuke ever tested, which was subsequently deemed even by the standards of SovietSuperscience to be wildly impractical. Regardless of this, it's treated by the narrative ([[ThrowawayCountry insomuch as it dwells on the consequences at all]]) as if the explosions had been smaller by an order of magnitude or four (i.e. closer to 10 kilotons than to 100 megatons).

* Howard Browne's story "Twelve Times Zero" makes the hydrogen-reaction == fission error, but it also makes the far worse error of claiming that if a hydrogen reaction is ever started, anywhere in the universe, it will set off a chain reaction that will destroy the entire universe. How unfortunate for all life forms, then, that hydrogen reactions are what power the stars. We can expect Starmageddon at any moment.

* ''Series/DoctorWho'': In [[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E4AliensOfLondon "Aliens of London"]]/[[Recap/DoctorWhoS27E5WorldWarThree "World War Three"]], the villains' plan is to spark a nuclear war to reduce the Earth to radioactive chunks they intend to sell as fuel. However, nuclear detonations don't make the ground itself radioactive. The radioactivity is the result of particles from the fissile material in the bombs being spread around by the detonation.
* The ''Series/{{Forever}}'' episode "The King of Columbus Circle" features a Litvinenko-inspired murder that makes the above mentioned ''Series/PersonOfInterest'' episode seem like a dramatized IAEA report. After realizing that the corpse of the week shows signs of radiation exposure despite turning down radiation therapy for his cancer, Henry rushes to the body as it's being wheeled out with a radiation detector and concludes:
-->"He was poisoned... by an isotope whose half-life is tens of thousands of years... which means everyone aboard this elevator is technically being irradiated too."

* ''Series/TheGreenHornet'': In the episode "Invasion from Outer Space", an unarmed H bomb (without an installed detonator) inside a truck can supposedly be set off by a detonator attached to the outside of the truck. This is physically impossible.

-->'''Chase''': "Do you have any idea how many electrical devices give off radiation?"
-->'''House''': "All of them."

** While it's true that everything electrical gives off radiation, it's radio frequency EM radiation and not ''ionizing'' radiation, which is the kind a Geiger counter picks up (or would have any chance of affecting cancer). The only electrical devices in a home that produce any ionizing radiation are smoke detectors (which contain a tiny amount of mostly alpha-emitting americium-241) and CRT displays (that produce soft Bremsstrahlung x-rays from electrons hitting the phosphor). Even assuming they were defective and even with the probe jammed up right next to one of those two, Chase would have a hard time hearing anything above background.
* The plot of the ''Series/{{Intelligence|2014}}'' episode "The Grey Hat", involving the use of a computer worm to set off a meltdown at a nuclear power plant, would require FailsafeFailure of every single safety system in the plant. Including ''manually lowering the control rods to shut the reactor down''.

* ''Series/{{Lost}}'' got it mostly right. On ''Lost'', the 'gun-type' plutonium fusion core of a hydrogen fission bomb was removed from a 1950-era hydrogen bomb by an Iraqi military officer with electronics experience, using the notes of a physicist, both from 2004.\\
\\
They averted GoingCritical by specifically having it rigged to explode on impact, with the implication that it would not normally. [[spoiler: That failed until it was banged on repeatedly, leading to the implication there was just some rigged switch that had failed to hit the ground correctly]].

** In the episode "Relevance", Agent Shaw comes across terrorists assembling a dirty bomb with "half a pound of cesium" (presumably Cs-137) in a glass ampoule. After incapacitating the terrorists, she picks up the ampoule ''with her bare hands'' and puts it in an unshielded plastic box to carry along with her. Both of those would be exceedingly stupid things to do and would have her showing acute symptoms of radiation exposure after the mission.
** A later episode, ''In Extremis'', gets pretty much everything it presents about radiation and radioactivity wrong.

*** Finch detects "alpha particle emissions" while just holding his probe up into the air. Nevermind that he wouldn't be able to distinguish alpha radiation from any other kind of ionizing radiation - alpha particles have a range in air of only centimeters, so if he was detecting them that way, it would mean that the alpha emitter was ''in the air'' and he was breathing in airborne contamination. Ouch.

* ''The Phantom Creeps'': This 1939 serial posits that a radiation poisoning antidote can be made by mixing in the original radioactive substance, a radioactivity measuring device can measure the radioactivity of an object several rooms away assuming the whole area isn't irradiated, and if the mad scientist ever completes his doomsday weapon it will be more powerful than dynamite.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'': In one episode: Data crash lands on a planet with a pre-industrial society and develops android amnesia, so he doesn't know the metal in the box he's carrying is dangerous, or even what the word "RADIOACTIVE" printed on it means. Thinking it harmless and grateful to the local village for helping him while he suffers his memory loss, he sells the plain-looking, gray pieces of metal to their merchants, who then sell it as jewelry, and people all over the village begin getting sick with radiation poisoning. With no memory of how such things work but with his capability to learn intact, Data spends the rest of the episode investigating the sickness and learning that the nondescript metal actually gives off dangerous, invisible energy. The realism takes a drop near the end when he cures the town with a liquid medicine akin to Rad Away in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout}}''.

* Averted in ''TabletopGame/{{Paranoia}}'''s "The Yellow Clearance Black Box Blues". An old (pre-[[AfterTheEnd Whoops]]) nuclear reactor will eventually meltdown, not explode. Lots of other stuff in ''Paranoia'' explodes just fine, though, not infrequently in nuclear fashion. They even have nuclear hand grenades, with a blast radius ''way'' bigger than the range you can throw them.

* The ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' series (ironically enough!), with [[SicklyGreenGlow sickly green]] radioactive waste that functions as ConvectionSchmonvection lava. Though the justification being that your H.E.V. suit protects against the ambient radiation being emitted as the built-in Geiger counter is going off. It's not until you're actually in it that it starts draining suit energy and doing damage and even then it's presumed the on-board medical system administers treatment to prevent anything permanent.

*** [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] at first since it is [[NukeEm armed to destroy the complex.]] But this doesn't excuse the fact that it STILL does this when you supposedly disarm it.
* ''VideoGame/{{Starcraft}}'' has tactical nukes that give off the token mushroom cloud (even in outer space), despite not being powerful to bring down even one half-decent building.

** 'Course, ''Starcraft'' is just full of these [[UnitsNotToScale inconsistencies]], due to GameplayAndStorySegregation. The mushroom cloud is due to RuleOfCool and TheCoconutEffect.

** Ghouls are people who somehow survived exposure to a massive dose of radiation, like that of a strategic nuclear weapon, and become immune to the damaging effects of radiation. Instead, high radiation levels cause them to regenerate. On the other hand, they end up looking like zombies and some suffer mental degradation and become feral. The transformation usually occurs gradually after exposure to large amounts of background radiation over time, though a sudden massive dose can induce the transformation far faster (Moira Brown in ''VideoGame/Fallout3'' if you detonate the bomb in Megaton and the NCR soldiers at Searchlight in ''[[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas New Vegas]]''). ''VideoGame/Fallout4'' introduces two ghouls who induced the condition in themselves through radiation experiments and a vaguely-described serum respectively.

* Averted/justified in ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid''. When Snake reaches the room where the dismantled nuclear warheads are stored, he can't shoot for fear of damaging the nukes -- not because it might cause them to blow up, but because they might breach the radioisotope containers.
** Naturally, the guards will go all Rambo in that very room if Snake is discovered. They're wearing NBC suits [[KickTheDog and Snake aren't]] (though in the remake, they use airfoil rounds).

** In some games in the series, nuclear reactors could be built in your cities for extra production, but they had a small chance to ''spontaneously explode'' (in Civ 4, with the full impact of a thermonuclear missile!). In Civ 5, either realism or the fact that [[AwesomeButImpractical hardly anyone used them because of the risk]] led to this feature being quietly removed.

* ''VideoGame/SimCity'' games almost avoided this trope -- if your nuclear plant melts down, the surrounding buildings are left undamaged (except for a small risk of fire), but the fallout is scattered around the surrounding area, rendering it uninhabitable. In retrospect, they probably should have put a ''containment dome'' over those reactors or something. ''Sim City 4'' plays it dead straight though: an exploding nuclear plant creates a huge blue mushroom cloud, a massive crater and a big shockwave that can flatten half your city.

** Nothing says {{BFG}} like a [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfjqNPaLlXw nuclear bazooka]]

* The ''VideoGame/MetroidPrimeTriology'' games feature Phazon, a {{Phlebotinum}} substance so ridiculously radioactive that it can kill someone wearing a sealed, armored spacesuit in less than a minute. It's apparently also ''stable''. It's apparently also organic, biological, and sentient making it's "radiation" more like some kind of unique bioenergy field people can siphon off. [[spoiler:Given that it's actually the material component of a hyperdimensional intelligent entity whose main body is a ''planet'', there might be more to it.]]

* In ''VideoGame/Earth2150'', the [[{{Eagleland}} United Civilized States]] forces use nuclear reactors to power their bases. When a reactor is destroyed, it blows up like a nuclear missile, wiping out half of the UCS base... wait no, the explosion is ''completely harmless''. At the beginning of the game, the Eurasians destroyed the nuclear stockpile of [=UCS=] on Alaska, and the explosion from it was so powerful that it knocked Earth off its orbit, and slowly send it to the sun.
* Averted and played straight in ''VideoGame/HeavyWeapon''. Attacking the atomic bombs that the [[DemonicSpiders Atomic Bomber]] drop will result in the bomb being destroyed (and not exploding), saving your ass from an otherwise-[[AlwaysAccurateAttack unavoidable]] OneHitKill. However, there is a huge lack of radiation poisoning should any nuke be used.
* At the end of ''VideoGame/TheSimpsonsHitAndRun'', you get to cart around nuclear waste. While the barrels will '''[[MadeOfExplodium explode]]'' if you ram something hard enough... you don't get damaged (well, any more than normal). Yet somehow it's supposed to bring down alien technology.

** Partly justified as the player is in a [[CanyonChase canyon]] trying to keep the enemy forces AWAY from the group dismantling the nuke in question (which they can't even see to begin with), while most of the people working on the thing have likely never even '''''seen''''' a nuke let alone taken one apart. [[RuleOfDrama If the resistance had someone who knew a thing or two about nuclear weapons on the scene, the mission would've been over within a couple of minutes of the players squadron arriving on the scene.]]

* ''VisualNovel/TheBottomOfTheWell'' is towards the realistic end of the spectrum; a lot of the tropes commonly wheeled out for nuclear apocalypses are absent. For example: no glowing green stuff (but plenty of grey radioactive ash); electronics being affected by an EMP; harm from prolonged radiation exposure rather than people immediately melting; no [[NuclearNasty Nuclear Nasties]].

* In the ''WesternAnimation/{{Futurama}}'' episode "Godfellas", the microscopic Shrimpkins make working microscopic H-bombs, complete with tiny mushroom clouds (in space, no less).
* An episode of ''WesternAnimation/{{Captain Planet|and the Planeteers}}'' -- the one with the equally hilarious stand-in for Hitler -- when a nuclear weapon detonates with a mushroom cloud ''in space''.
* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons''. Let's start with the 90-gallon drums full of [[TechnicolorScience green, glowy nuclear waste]] and work our way out from there...

** Then there's the ''WesternAnimation/TreehouseOfHorror'' episode ''[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS9E4TreehouseOfHorrorVIII The Homega Man]]'' where a NeutronBomb hits Springfield and turns everyone who wasn't killed (or protected by lead based paint) into mutants instantly. Not to mention, not only those reduced to skeletons had their clothes still somewhat intact but the buildings of town seem to have foundationally survived as well.
** In the ''Treehouse of Horror'' episode ''[[Recap/TheSimpsonsS16E1TreehouseOfHorrorXV The Ned Zone]]'', Homer blows up the power plant by simply pressing a button- implying that ''the plant has a self-destruct mechanism''. The explosion did show a little bit more realism than ''The Homega Man'' in Ned's future vision [[spoiler:that became true despite Ned's efforts]] by showing what would be left of Springfield after a nuclear explosion, nothing more than a newly formed crater (though, no shockwave, fallout or nearby fires were created from the explosion).

** And on ''at least'' two occasions, Homer has actually [[ExtremeOmnivore eaten]] radioactive material (the aforementioned waste as a punishment from Mr. Burns and the plutonium he attempted to use as fertilizer in "E-I-E-I-(annoyed grunt)")...and survived, with no ill effects.
** In one episode Mr Burns erects a sign that describes the state of the power plant outside the sign. Homer accurately jokes to his coworkers that if there really is a meltdown, there won't be enough power in the system to power the sign to give out the 'Meltdown in progress: Evacuate' message. Nobody mentions that if there really is a critical meltdown, it would likely be too late for evacuation to do any good to anyone close enough to read the sign even if there was power.

* The second ''WesternAnimation/{{Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles|2003}}'' series manages to get nuclear explosives right. One of the turtles manages to keep the nuclear part of an implosion bomb from activating... but the conventional explosion still goes off, to little more than a decent blast -- it's actually explained that this will not result in a full-scale nuclear detonation. It's not specifically identified as an implosion bomb, but that's the type this could actually happen with.
* Odd {{subversion}} of the "All mushroom clouds are caused by nuclear blasts" idea with the old {{Creator/Disney}} short WesternAnimation/DragonAround with WesternAnimation/DonaldDuck and Chip 'N' Dale. In the end, Donald tries to [[spoiler: blow up the stump with dynamite]] but instead [[spoiler: he is blown sky-high several times over in subsequent mushroom cloud blasts.]]
* In Creator/HannaBarbera's short-lived ''[[WesternAnimation/TheGodzillaPowerHour Godzilla]]'' cartoon, there's an episode where, no joke, [[OurTimeTravelIsDifferent exposure to uranium sends the protagonists back in time]]. ''To [[EverythingsBetterWithDinosaurs prehistoric times.]]''
** Even better: How do they get back? [[TooDumbToLive By grabbing piles of uranium in their hands and molding them into balls!]]
* In the 1996 ''{{WesternAnimation/Gargoyles}}'' episode "Walkabout", the nano-robotics [[AIIsACrapshoot Matrix]] gets loose as the Avalon Travellers show up. When Dr. Reynard mentions that they (Gargoyles and humans) have to stop the [[GreyGoo ever-expanding]] Matrix before it reaches the nuclear reactor, she points to... the cooling towers. Then the Matrix is talked into stopping before it gets its slimy tendrils into the reactor by... engulfing the cooling towers. At this point, it had covered/absorbed every bit of the research complex except the towers. Yep.
* The backstory of ''[[WesternAnimation/AdventureTime Adventure Time]]'' involves an ostensible nuclear apocalypse whose long-term effects in the world's subsequent recovery have eventually amounted to what is for all intents and purposes a whimsical (and in some places ''literal'') SugarBowl. It could actually be described as a similar, yet ''vastly'' more cartoonish, case to that of the ''Fallout'' series in terms of fantastical mutations and other evolutionary effects. This is justified by the fact that the Mushroom War also explicitly involved weaponized sorcery, but still.

* ''Film/BackToTheFuture'' featured a minuscule plutonium powered fission reactor that barely altered the shape of the famous [=DeLorean=] time machine, had a 1.21 Gigawatt output (greater than many full-sized nuclear power stations), and expended a fuel rod in an instant. Later it's apparently fitted with a fusion reactor the size of a coffee grinder that runs on household waste.

* ''ComicBook/IncredibleHulk'': Gamma rays and gamma radiation are depicted as visible green energy, when visible green light is at a lower frequency than gamma rays, and gamma rays are at a higher frequency than visible light, ultraviolet, and X-rays.

** That being said, there ARE actual atomic batteries, called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator RTG]]. The atomic fuel inside them is also used just as a heater, but they also include some thermoelectric generators to convert heat to electricity. The conversion efficiency is ''very'' low, around single per cents, and the battery cannot "switch off", it will produce heat whether you're currently use it to power something or not. This, together with the prohibitively high prices of such batteries, leave not many fields of use for them. Mostly, they are used for unmanned space probes. The power requirements for them are usually low, and the excessive heat is actually a bonus, since you need to heat the electronics in space anyway. But even if we make such batteries cheap, even if we shield them completely from the radiation, even if somehow ensure its safety, [=RTGs=] will never become a "consumer battery". First, as was said, because of the heat. To produce 100W of electric power it'll have to dissipate ~2kW of thermal energy. That's a small oven worth of heat, while 100W will be barely enough to power a laptop, never mind a car or a [[ComicBook/IronMan powered armor]]. Second problem is the atomic fuel itself. The specific power of the fuel is inversely proportional to its half-life, which means if we want a small and powerful battery, we'll have to deal with reduced lifetime. Polonium, for example, produces 140W/g of heat, but has a half-life of 4 months, which means that just after 4 month its output power will be cut in half. And remember, you can't switch it off, which means the 4 months will start the day it was made, not the day you pick it up in store. By the time you buy it it'll probably be already at 80% or less, and by the time you actually need it it'll be long dead.

** Most radioactive materials don't glow at all[[note]]not in visible light.[[/note]]. Swimming pool reactors have a characteristic blue glow that's actually [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation Cherenkov radiation]] -- pretty, but not caused by the radioactivity itself. Some intensely radioactive substances like actinium, cesium-137, and pure radium metal itself (in large enough quantities), actually do glow [[note]]technically, self-fluoresce [[/note]] by their own radioactivity and are generally not healthy to be in the same room with. However, even those are faint enough that you can only see the glow in the dark.

** "Critical mass" is a highly misunderstood term. Whether a sample of fissile material will produce an uncontrolled chain reaction is dependent on (roughly) the ratio of mass to surface area. If the ratio is too low (too much surface area) neutrons escape without causing further fission. If it's above the critical ratio, then of the three neutrons produced by each fission, on average >1 will cause another fission (meaning that the rate of reactions will grow). The oft quoted "critical mass" is the critical mass where ''a sphere'' of the material at a given density will go critical on its own. Thus, you can have a solid subcritical chunk of a fissile material of a larger mass than that value, as long as it has a different geometry (e.g. shaped like a rod instead of a sphere)[[note]]This has been the cause of several accidents where workers have transferred material from one vessel to another of a different shape. An amount that's safe in one vessel might go critical in another. When this happens unintentionally it causes a "criticality accident", discussed in the previous section.[[/note]]. It's also possible to detonate a bomb with less than the "critical mass" of material -- typically by the use of neutron reflectors.

*** All modern warheads use the Teller-Ulam system, as the "Layer cake" design was rather inefficient, but it let the Soviet scientists to create an upgrade of the American design, where the additional fission-fusion stages are added to the device, thus making it of theoretically unlimited power. The most powerful thermonuclear device ever detonated, [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba the "Tsar Bomba"]], was reportedly a three-stage device employed in a two-an-a-half staged configuration, with the tamper of the tertiary made of lead and not the U-238 to reduce the fallout. With the uranium tamper the bomb's projected output was 101.5 megatons, lead tamper reduced it to just ~50 Mt.

** In real life, a nuclear weapon requires precise conditions[[note]]The precise engineering of a nuclear weapon makes the best Swiss watch look like a flint knife in comparison.[[/note]] to achieve a full-scale explosion (mainly a sphere of conventional explosives being set off in unison around the nuclear mass, compressing it to supercriticality and initiating a nuclear reaction) while fictional nukes act [[HairTriggerExplosive like spheres filled with mega-nitroglycerin]]. Shooting, or even blowing up a real-life nuclear weapon with conventional explosives is likely to ''disable'' the warhead, not set it off[[note]]The standard setup for a nuclear bomb is a sphere of weapons grade fissile material surrounded by conventional explosives. The explosives are directed inward in order to generate the necessary chain reaction. High precision engineering is required to get everything to come together properly; if things are off by even milliseconds, the yield will be dramatically reduced and it may fizzle entirely. In fact, partial detonation of the explosives will disable the nuclear weapon (but probably contaminate the area with radiation).[[/note]]. Blunt force will not set off a nuclear weapon either, no matter how hard.

** That being said, there ARE actual atomic batteries, called [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator RTG]]. The atomic fuel inside them is also used just as a heater, but they also include some thermoelectric generators to convert heat to electricity. The conversion efficiency is ''very'' low, around single per cents, and the battery cannot "switch off", it will produce heat whether you're currently use it to power something or not. This, together with the prohibitively high prices of such batteries, leave not many fields of use for them. Mostly, they are used for unmanned space probes. The power requirements for them are usually low, and the excessive heat is actually a bonus, since you need to heat the electronics in space anyway. But even if we make such batteries cheap, even if we shield them completely from the radiation, even if somehow ensure it's safety, [=RTGs=] will never become a "consumer battery". First, as was said, because of the heat. To produce 100W of electric power it'll have to dissipate ~2kW of thermal energy. That's a small oven worth of heat, while 100W will be barely enough to power a laptop, never mind a car or a [[ComicBook/IronMan powered armor]]. Second problem is the atomic fuel itself. The specific power of the fuel is inversely proportional to its half-life, which means if we want a small and powerful battery, we'll have to deal with reduced lifetime. Polonium, for example, produces 140W/g of heat, but has a half-life of 4 months, which means that just after 4 month its output power will be cut in half. And remember, you can't switch it off, which means the 4 months will start the day it was made, not the day you pick it up in store. By the time you buy it it'll probably be already at 80% or less, and by the time you actually need it it'll be long dead.

* In ''ComicBook/IdentityCrisis'', ComicBook/{{Firestorm}} the Nuclear Man, mortally wounded after being impaled through the chest with the Shining Knight's magical sword by the Shadow Thief, detonates like an atomic bomb a short while later. The omniscient narrator, ComicBook/GreenArrow, comments:

** Heinlein sets up a blatant type 1 error in "Blowups Happen," a story where power is generated at a nuclear plant where ''tons'' of plutonium is kept just below critical mass. Any failure is going to be catastrophic, and the operators know it. The author gets a pass, though, because he wrote this in ''1940'', [[ScienceMarchesOn two years before]] anyone (Enrico Fermi, for that matter) had built a nuclear reactor.

** ''Film/TomorrowNeverDies'' averts this in the end. A nuclear missile is going to be fired at Bejing in less than a minute. Since James Bond doesn't have enough time to delicately disarm, he just attaches some explosives to the tail end of the missile so when the missile ignites to lift off, the flames detonate the explosives, safely blowing the missile to hell. However, the movie does play the trope straight at the beginning, when the top brass is talking about some Soviet nuclear torpedoes detonating or spreading plutonium from their missile strike.

** However, it's mostly averted in [[Film/{{Alien}} the first movie]]-- when the ''Nostromo''[='=]s engines overload, the blast appears as a large circle of light in space, and there is no sound until the shockwave hits the still-too-close escape shuttle.

** If a reactor does melt down or is going to melt down, the hero usually has to manually initiate a SCRAM, an emergency shutdown, sometimes going to elaborate lengths to set the SCRAM up or even having to manually insert the control rods into the reactor one at a time. This is as opposed to real life, where it's typically an automatic safety feature which engages if the reactor shifts outside a certain set of safe operating parameters and where a manual reactor SCRAM is as simple as turning a switch. A switch that usually exists in multiple redundant locations both near and far away from the reactor room, so that you can always reach at least one during an emergency. What's more, even the failsafe have "dead-man" failsafes. Usually, the SCRAM mechanism has to actively ''prevent'' the shutdown from happening -- for instance, by constantly pushing against a spring, or holding up control rods with an electromagnet. If the power to the safety systems is interrupted even for a moment, the mechanism stops resisting and the reactor shuts down.

** It also, quite realistically, didn't help them much, because this was, well, ''[[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII 1941]]''. Thus the "Earth electronics" were vacuum-tubes based, and these [[NoSell tend to shrug off the EMP]] because of the way they work and generally being quite crude, generally simply requiring restarting at worst, the while the much more sophisticated, but flimsy solid-state electronics would be permanently fried.

* ''Comicbook/IncredibleHulk'': Gamma rays and gamma radiation are depicted as visible green energy, when visible green light is at a lower frequency than gamma rays, and gamma rays are at a higher frequency than visible light, ultraviolet, and X-rays.

* Deconstructed in ''Comicbook/{{Watchmen}}''. The BigBad uses this trope to convince an ignorant public that Dr. Manhattan is a walking radioactive cancer-machine.

* ''Comicbook/TheAvengers'' villain Radioactive Man frequently uses his powers with no indication that he or his surroundings will become contaminated with radiation, or that the heroes, villains, or any bystanders will receive radiation poisoning from his presence or the use of his powers. But we do know his radiation can deflect Thor's hammer being thrown towards him.

* The third, fusion-powered version of Comicbook/{{Starman}} for Creator/DCComics fought a phasing opponent who used a Cadmium dagger (cadmium being used to dampen nuclear reactions in fission reactors sometimes) in an attempt to neutralize Starman's powers because 'well you're powered by nuclear energy!'. Which got him a 'you're an idiot!' moment from Starman as he rightly points out that his being transformed into a solar-powered being like the sun meant he ran on fusion and not fission reactions.

* Peter Chimera's ''VideoGame/HalfLife'' fanfic ''[[FanFic/QuarterLifeHalfwayToDestruction Quarter-Life: Halfway to Destruction]]''. Being a TrollFic, it does not have the usual errors but instead makes up new ones. Examples:

* ''FanFic/LightAndDarkTheAdventuresOfDarkYagami'' keeps returning to this one. A nuclear bomb is no more powerful than a small pipe bomb ("the nuclear bom went off like a bom") -- the worst of the damage is a scratch in Light's dad's car -- but covers the area in "radiactiv" (which fatally irradiates "[[IAmNotShazam Yotsuba]]" but leaves everyone else unharmed). Later, nuclear missiles are used as pens, and later than that, putting "nuclears" in a normal explosion makes it magic, [[OutrunTheFireball letting it chase our 'hero']].

* ''Film/{{Godzilla 2014}}'':

** Ghouls are people who somehow survived exposure to a massive dose of radiation, like that of a strategic nuclear weapon, and become immune to the damaging effects of radiation. Instead, high radiation levels cause them to regenerate. On the other hand, they end up looking like zombies and some suffer mental degradation and become feral. The transformation usually occurs gradually after exposure to large amounts of background radiation over time, though a sudden massive dose can induce the transformation far faster (Moira Brown in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'' if you detonate the bomb in Megaton and the NCR soldiers at Searchlight in ''[[VideoGame/FalloutNewVegas New Vegas]]''). ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 4}}'' introduces two ghouls who induced the condition in themselves through radiation experiments and a vaguely-described serum respectively.

** The Glow is a location in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 1}}'' that's still deadly radioactive almost a hundred years after it took a direct hit from a bomb. The external approach to Vault 87 in ''Fallout 3'' is even deadlier, with levels peaking at 3617 rads per second near the entrance.

* The nuclear missile in ''ShadowWarrior''.

* The ''VideoGame/MetroidPrime'' games feature Phazon, a {{Phlebotinum}} substance so ridiculously radioactive that it can kill someone wearing a sealed, armored spacesuit in less than a minute. It's apparently also ''stable''. It's apparently also organic, biological, and sentient making it's "radiation" more like some kind of unique bioenergy field people can siphon off. [[spoiler:Given that it's actually the material component of a hyperdimensional intelligent entity whose main body is a ''planet'', there might be more to it.]]

* VideoGame/{{Touhou}}: Utsuho gets a lot of traditional nuclear reactor and meltdown imagery and symbolism despite only having power over ''fusion'' and not ''fission''. Also, the radiation issues are completely ignored in gameplay.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Earth 2150}}'', the [[{{Eagleland}} United Civilized States]] forces use nuclear reactors to power their bases. When a reactor is destroyed, it blows up like a nuclear missile, wiping out half of the UCS base... wait no, the explosion is ''completely harmless''. At the beginning of the game, the Eurasians destroyed the nuclear stockpile of [=UCS=] on Alaska, and the explosion from it was so powerful that it knocked Earth off its orbit, and slowly send it to the sun.

* ''Videogame/MechWarrior'', set in the ''Tabletopgame/BattleTech'' universe, carries over many of the boardgame's nuclear whoopsies. The fusion reactors in battlemechs have infinite range, their only limiting factor being OverHeating from firing weapons. Depending on the game, reactors can [[GoingCritical go critical]] when the mech is destroyed, with varying degrees of destruction; in ''Mechwarrior 4'' all mechs explode in a small blue fireball when destroyed, while in ''Living Legends'' destroyed mechs have a 20% chance to erupt in a massive mushroom cloud that can level forests and [[{{EMP}} temporarily short out electronics]]. However, most games do not feature these critical meltdowns and destroying the reactor simply disables the mech through power loss or ammo explosions.

[[folder: Idea 4: Fusion = MAGIC]]
# Alternatively, fusion may be shown as a perfect, clean energy source that generates limitless energy from minuscule amounts of water. Something that's so safe, you could stick miniaturized versions of it into cars, rockets, airplanes [[ComicBook/IronMan and powered armor]] without having to worry about any NuclearNasty incidents in case those mini-reactors' insides suddenly become their outsides. Not so in real life. Most proposed fusion reactions generate lots of neutrons, which transmute anything they come across into a soup of radioactive isotopes. Some possible fusion reactions are aneutronic, mostly or entirely avoiding this problem, but those produce less energy and are technically more challenging to achieve, as if making a viable fusion power plant of any kind weren't hard enough.
** While it's true that fusion is not radiation-free, the issue posed by the irradiated material is ''vastly'' inferior to fission reactions. Generally only the innards of the reactor become irradiated; given sufficient care, an ideal fusion plant ''would'', from a practical point of view, be "clean". Anyone who stuck their head in the reactor would die gruesomely, but nobody outside the plant itself would need to concern themselves with such issues. Of course, this is also true of fission reactors.
** It would actually be about the same at the plant itself. The main source of radiation exposure for personnel operating a nuclear reactor is nitrogen-16, which is created when oxygen in water (you still have to cool the thing, and transport energy to your steam turbines somehow) is exposed to neutron flux. Neutrons will also irradiate iron and cobalt atoms in the primary coolant piping, providing the majority of radiation exposure in a shutdown, contaminating the coolant (thus requiring the same control methods needed as in a fission plant), and ensuring that all maintenance tooling and cleaning supplies are low-level nuclear waste (again, same control methods). However, the big difference between fission and fusion in terms of waste is the spent nuclear fuel; the nuclides created by the fusion reaction itself would be short-lived and tame compared to fission products.
** What WOULD be a perfectly clean energy source would be magnetic confined helium-3 fusion, as its byproduct is protons, rather than neutrons. This has two advantages: 1. A proton flux won't make the walls radioactive because it will be contained by the magnetic field. 2. Since protons are charged, a high energy proton flux IS an electric current, so it can generate electricity directly by induction, rather than requiring a steam plant. This avoids the nitrogen-16 problem and also dramatically increases the efficiency of the generator.

* ''Tribulation Force'', one of the ''Literature/LeftBehind'' books, heralds the arrival of [[TheFourHorsemenOfTheApocalypse the Second Horseman of the Apocalypse]] with two ''100 megaton'' bombs being dropped on London and New York- correction, on ''Heathrow'' and ''JFK'', as if such precise targeting would make the slightest difference to anyone with a bomb that would instantly annihilate everything within 100 km. 100 Mt is twice the yield of the Tsar Bomba, the largest nuke ever tested, which was subsequently deemed even by the standards of SovietSuperscience to be wildly impractical. Regardless of this, it's treated by the narrative ([[ThrowawayCountry insomuch as it dwells on the consequences at all]]) as if the explosions had been smaller by an order of magnitude or four.

* Odd {{subversion}} of the "All mushroom clouds are caused by nuclear blasts" idea with the old {{Creator/Disney}} short DragonAround with DonaldDuck and Chip 'N' Dale. In the end, Donald tries to [[spoiler: blow up the stump with dynamite]] but instead [[spoiler: he is blown sky-high several times over in subsequent mushroom cloud blasts.]]

** Alternately, fusion may be shown as a perfect, clean energy source that generates limitless energy from minuscule amounts of water. Something that's so safe, you could stick miniaturized versions of it into cars, rockets, airplanes [[ComicBook/IronMan and powered armor]] without having to worry about any NuclearNasty incidents in case those mini-reactors' insides suddenly become their outsides. Not so in real life. Most proposed fusion reactions generate lots of neutrons, which transmute anything they come across into a soup of radioactive isotopes. Some possible fusion reactions are aneutronic, mostly or entirely avoiding this problem, but those produce less energy and are technically more challenging to achieve, as if making a viable fusion power plant of any kind weren't hard enough.
*** While it's true that fusion is not radiation-free, the issue posed by the irradiated material is ''vastly'' inferior to fission reactions. Generally only the innards of the reactor become irradiated; given sufficient care, an ideal fusion plant ''would'', from a practical point of view, be "clean". Anyone who stuck their head in the reactor would die gruesomely, but nobody outside the plant itself would need to concern themselves with such issues. Of course, this is also true of fission reactors.
*** It would actually be about the same at the plant itself. The main source of radiation exposure for personnel operating a nuclear reactor is nitrogen-16, which is created when oxygen in water (you still have to cool the thing, and transport energy to your steam turbines somehow) is exposed to neutron flux. Neutrons will also irradiate iron and cobalt atoms in the primary coolant piping, providing the majority of radiation exposure in a shutdown, contaminating the coolant (thus requiring the same control methods needed as in a fission plant), and ensuring that all maintenance tooling and cleaning supplies are low-level nuclear waste (again, same control methods). However, the big difference between fission and fusion in terms of waste is the spent nuclear fuel; the nuclides created by the fusion reaction itself would be short-lived and tame compared to fission products.
*** What WOULD be a perfectly clean energy source would be magnetic confined helium-3 fusion, as its byproduct is protons, rather than neutrons. This has two advantages: 1. A proton flux won't make the walls radioactive because it will be contained by the magnetic field. 2. Since protons are charged, a high energy proton flux IS an electric current, so it can generate electricity directly by induction, rather than requiring a steam plant. This avoids the nitrogen-16 problem and also dramatically increases the efficiency of the generator.

[[folder: Idea 4: I Can Touch Radiation!]]